State Reimbursements

I wanted to talk a little about the work I do in my internship. The main focus of my job is collecting grant money from the state. My job is to organize, update, and find expenditures from certain city transportation projects which are available for reimbursements from the state. The reason why I do this is because in 2004, Arizona voters passed Proposition 400. The proposition authorizes a 20-year continuation of the half-cent sales tax for transportation projects in Maricopa County (ARS 38-6345). This half-cent sales tax will help pay for transportation projects such as road widening, renovations of old roads, and so on. The way the process works is the City of Mesa will pay 100% of the costs up front, and at the year-end of the budget, my boss and I will go through the expenditures to match up the costs of the projects with the numbers in all the other departments. Once we have balanced numbers, we will calculate and charge the state 70% of the costs. The 70% will be paid from the generation of the half-cent sales tax. The process is very time consuming because not every department will have the exact same numbers and we have to locate and address the discrepancies. We are hoping to find around a million dollars in reimbursement money for this fiscal year, but with the budgetary crisis, the 20-year plan has been altered, and there have been some projects which have been suspended. So I think this number is a little high, but I think it is good to have promising hopes during these times.

Having the responsibility of this job makes me feel very proud. I know many of the concepts are advanced for my financial skills, but with being able to save the city money and maybe jobs, this accountability helps motivate me to learn and complete the job to my best ability. With cities trying to scrap and save, I feel I am completing an important duty. I am worried about the current financial situation at the City of Mesa, and I do not know what will happen with the FY 11’s budget. But I hope the work I do can help alleviate some of the stress during these times.

Why Hello

I currently work as an Accounting Intern in the Transportation department at the City of Mesa. The job is somewhat familiar to me because it is my second time working here. Last May I had to leave the internship to pursue another opportunity due to financial reasons, but 8 months later, here I am back where I came from. When I left the first time I was a little sad because I did enjoy the job very much. I found the organizational culture to suit my personality well. My co-workers create a very welcoming environment, and even with the hard financial times, everyone I have come across still seems to go out of their way to ask how I am doing. It is nice to walk down a hallway and rather than getting a head nod or someone trying to avoid eye contact; I always get a “Hey, how are you today?” or an observation about the weather. These subtle gestures go a long way for me.

Although the organizational culture is great, the reason I chose this internship is because I wanted to gain some financial/accounting experience in the public sector since government accounting is different from the private sector accounting. Also I believe every manager needs a good financial background. So I am following this belief and I am trying to fine tune my finance skills.

Anyway, the internship has been great so far. I have completed various AP tasks, and I just started on my big budgetary project. I do not want to give too much away about the project yet because I know I will be talking about it more as the semester goes on, but I am excited to tackle the challenge.